243 :

"Nathaniel don't listen to your grandfather, just take it easy, Okay?" Diane immediately jumped in.

Nathaniel on his side just waved it away as it was of no importance and made his way to the first target where he plucked the arrows that he shot and put them back into his quiver. Back to his original position, he decided to wait before firing again. Trying a second time without knowing what you were doing wrong had no interest whatsoever, you would just end up making the same mistakes over and over again.

No, he needed to learn more about archery before starting to understand what he was doing wrong. He was going to put his bow down when he stopped mid movement. That was his problem he realized. He didn't need to find out about that knowledge because he already had it, inside of him. Too bad that those information were at a place in his brain that he couldn't access at the moment but since he managed to get a glimpse once, maybe there was a way to do it again.

The first time he did it, that wasn't even wanted, it just… happened and that was the problem. Nathaniel liked to be always in control of himself and after losing consciousness the last time, his defense was up at the moment. Closing his eyes, he took a couple of deep breaths and tried to let go. When that didn't work, he tried to feel the bow in his hand, tried to connect with it. Contrary to his expectations and some light reading he did in the past, that didn't work either.

Sighing, he put the bow down for good this time and turned back to his family who were quite surprised at this anticlimactic ending.

"Seriously!? All that builds up for that?" His grandfather shouted, annoyed.

"What are you annoyed about, grandpa? I'm still human, you can't expect me to succeed at everything I do, especially on such esoteric subjects. I have no guideline to help me navigate this kind of topic and our past experience taught us that I need to tread carefully. You never saw it but I almost died a couple of times."

"What!? Why wasn't I made aware of that before?" He shouted furiously, turning to his daughter.

"That was before you were told about it and frankly, I envy you a lot for not having seen it. Trust me that the vision of my son bleeding through his nostrils, eyes, ears and mouth as a firm hold on all my nightmares and had kept us up at night more than we care to admit it." Mary said bitterly.

"Okay, that sounds pretty bad." His grandmother commented.

"You can picture it as me in the middle of a field with thousands of tresor chests. A few of them have tresors in it, others are totally empty and the rest are booby trapped and I have no indications at which one are what. All are not booby trapped the same way, there are some bad ones which got me almost bleeding to death and others are more mild. The last experience I had when I tried to enhance my sight, I ended up not being able to see colors for four days. On the bright side, I learned what it was like to live the life of a conservative by seeing everything in black and white." Nathaniel add with humor.

"That's not funny." His grandfather grumbled. As an ex conservative, it was still a sore subject for him.

"That's kind of funny." Karine said with a little smile.

"The bottom line being that I learned my lessons." Nathaniel spoke up to get back on the subject. "I will not try to force things unless I absolutely have to and I don't at the moment. More so since I got to get back to NY late this afternoon."

"I thought you were going to stay home for a couple of days more." It's grandmother said, sadly. It was not a secret that she loved to have her grandson around a lot.

"That was my intention but I got a call from the Dean office earlier today, I'm summoned to a meeting with the Dean. I was going to deny it for medical reasons but it sounded serious so I accepted."

"Why would they call you up? Did you do something you were not supposed to or break the rules in any way?" Karine asked.

"That first depends on your definition of breaking the rules, mom." Nathaniel laughed before getting serious again. "Of course I broke the rules but proving it beyond a reasonable doubt would be next to impossible. On the other hand, I did create their worst PR problem in more than thirty years so yeah, I'm sure some people on the board must be quite angry with me about that."

"You really think they would try to expel you for that?" Mary asked.

"Try? Oh yes, beyond a doubt, they will. Educational boards are full of elitist out of touch morons that would try to do things like that, not even considering that they would bring their PR problem to a new height or not caring about it to do what they want. Getting the majority of the board to agree on that would be extremely hard so no, I don't think this is about that. I guess I will find out about it later." Nathaniel said simply, waving the issue away.

*****

Sitting in the Dean office, four hours later, Nathaniel was looking at the Dean and Joshua on the other side of the desk with curiosity evident on his face. The atmosphere inside the office was quite weird at the moment with Nathaniel simply waiting and the Dean not knowing how to start the conversation. Luckily, Joshua took the decision for him and spoke up.

"Hello Nathaniel, first I would like to thank you for coming this fast to see us, I know that you were resting after being assaulted." Joshua said, giving a pointed look to Nathaniel's face whose bruises had started to turn yellowish.

"Of course, it sounded important so I came the second that I could. Whatever it is, I will gladly help you and the school."

Joshua and the Dean look at each other after Nathaniel answers, seeing the same things in the other expression. That was a loaded offer if they ever heard one.

"That won't be necessary Nathaniel." The Dean answers prudently. "We called you here to make you aware of our investigation. Joshuad and a huge number of the teachers corps with fourth year students helps review the evidence you gave about Professor Miles. Their findings echo your own and effective from today the Professor Miles has been terminated from Columbia University."

"Good. What about the damage he did to this school?"

"A statement has been crafted and will be released tomorrow morning announcing his termination and presenting our excuses for not knowing. We also hired a private investigator to do background checks on the other teachers to prevent something like this to ever happen again."

"That's a good statement but I wasn't referring to that." Nathaniel shook his head.

"I don't follow." Joshua said, creasing his eyebrow.

"Can I have a little leeway in terms of University rules and regulations about this? Let's just say that I have more about this but it involves information I shouldn't have." Nathaniel said carefully.

"And I presume you don't want to tell us how you got that information, right?" The Dean asked bitterly.

"That is obvious, I wouldn't give the name of someone who was trying to do the right thing." Nathaniel answered. He was edging the truth, the person he was talking about just simply being him hacking into the Columbia database.

"I see. Let us hear it then." The Dean sighed.

"You see, when I first started looking into Miles and I saw him do what he was doing. I was thinking that he was just someone with loose morals who was willing to do whatever it was needed to win, like stacking the deck in his favor by striking black jurors to get easier conviction on black defendants. The deeper I started to dig, the more I realized that I was wrong and it was only after the news blew out and I received confidential information that I knew how bad it was. Miles was and is, a white supremasict."

"Come on, Nathaniel! Miles was a teacher for more than a decade, we would have noticed if he was a damn white supremacist!" The Dean reacted instantly.

"I understand your point of view and I don't blame you for not noticing because he was quite clever about it. The information I got was the grade of all law students for the last decade."

There was a sharp intake of breath hearing that on the other side of the desk.

"I know it's bad and I assure you, I will never speak of it and I deleted everything I didn't use for security purposes. Now, would you care to learn about my findings or not?" Nathaniel asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"This is going to be bad isn't it?" Joshua asked with dread.

"I'm not gonna lie, yes, it is. So using that data, I start looking for any inconsistencies. Things weird that made no sense from a grading standpoint. At first, I found nothing weird at all that was before I started accounting for race. What made it difficult to spot was that he never went after the really smart or gifted one, that would have made things too obvious. No, he was using his position to give lower grades to students of color. Let me show you." Nathaniel said, taking a folder from his bag and taking the first files on it. Joshua and the Dean leaning forward to take a good look at it.

"You see, it was doing things like that. He was grading the paper of his white students first then he was separating his students into three tiers. In the first tiers was the really smart and gifted student, he was being fair to everyone in that one. On the second tiers was when it was happening. The second tier was the top/mid ranked students. That was when he was picking the more stable white students and was using it at a baseline. To that baseline, he was deducting five percent of his grade and was applying it to the student POC grade. On the third tier, it was ten to fifteen percent that he was deducting it. Just look at the numbers, I circle in red the student that he was using as a baseline and in green the POC students he was deducting from." Nathaniel explains, pushing a couple of grading papers to each of them.

Nathaniel leaned back in his seat while he let the Dean and Joshua look at the grading papers. Without asking, they took the folder and started rummaging through each of them until the Dean raised his eyes and turned the papers he was looking at to Nathaniel's side.

"What's up with the green circle here?"

"That's the new baseline, he was changing the student he was using as a baseline once each semester or when the student was doing too well. In that case, that was the second option I circle in green."

"I can't believe this was happening all this time." The Dean seethed with clenched fists. "How many?" He asked, looking at Nathaniel.

"You are not going to like that answer, Dean." Nathaniel warned.

"I know that already, just tell me!"

"Two hundred and twelve who narrowly didn't graduate because of the underwhelming grade they received. The list of names is at the bottom of the folder. I will let you handle it how you see fit."

Nodding, the Dean took the last files on the bottom of the folder and looked at it with a complicated expression on his face. Seeing eight names marked in red on the list, he looked at Nathaniel.

"The eight names marked in red are now deceased."

There was a long silence after that ended when Joshua cleared his throat and spoke up.

"That wasn't all, we need to talk about the last thing you told us last time."